From I do to the Seven-Year Itch, a new study shows that marriage (surprise) is hard work

Next to Fig Newtons, there's nothing I like better than a good longitudinal study. I especially enjoy ones with fancy titles that use lots of charts and graphs to tell us what we suspected all along. The latest, entitled "The Nature and Predictors of the Trajectory of Change in Marital Quality for Husbands and Wives over the First 10 Years of Marriage," was published this month in the Journal of Developmental Psychology. Cutely subtitled "Predicting the Seven-Year Itch," this extensive research charts the decline in the quality of marriages of more than 500 Midwestern couples, surveyed over 10 years.